Wrongfully Accused

by Ana Barrons

  He, on the other hand...

  “The FBI isn’t looking only at her... Your aunt,” he said. “They’re investigating all the families of the people on board that plane.” And their friends and associates and former colleagues and anyone they’d ever slept with or pissed off—the latter two often being the same people. Given that most of the passengers were politicians, the list of potential enemies was long.

  Jeremy brightened a bit. “So, it’s not just Aunt Kate they’re blaming?”

  “It’s too soon to blame anyone, Jer,” he said. “The news media likes to focus on people that are...interesting in some way.” He’d nearly said “sexy,” in the media sense of the word, but he stopped himself. Best he not even think that word where Kate was concerned. And sure, she was the perfect target. Young, beautiful, rich, as liberal as her husband was conservative. And a widow for the second time.

  “Dad,” Jeremy said, breaking into his thoughts. “We’re here.”

  Gabe had walked right past the restaurant. He grinned. “Guess I spaced.”

  “At least you’re smiling now,” Jeremy said. “You had your cop face on before.”

  They ordered a large pizza with pepperoni and sausage, garlic bread and Cokes. While Jeremy made patterns on the table with the packages of sugar and sweetener, they talked about TV shows, computer games and the camping trip they planned to take in August.

  “Mom says maybe Aunt Kate will move back to Philadelphia to be with her family.” Jeremy frowned. “I don’t want her to move away.”

  Please, God. The further he was from Kate the greater his peace of mind. “Is she thinking about it?”

  “She’s not sure what she’s going to do.”

  “How often do you talk to her?” And why did he suddenly care?

  “We usually just email,” Jeremy said.

  “A lot?”

  “I don’t know, like a few times a week. Sometimes we go back and forth.” He grinned. “I want to teach her how to chat, but she said she wouldn’t be able to keep up with me.”

  Gabe sat back, discomfited. “I didn’t realize how big a part of your life she was.”

  Jeremy shrugged. “Usually when I say her name you look away and change the subject.”

  “I do?” As if he didn’t know. Pushing Kate out of his mind, holding this grudge against her, had become a habit. He wasn’t sure which alarmed him more—the fact that he’d done it for so long or the fact that she was in his head again. In his system. Like a goddamn drug.

  Damn it, he never should have touched her.

  * * *

  Senator Felicia D’Argento pressed the button on her Saab keychain and heard the reassuring chirp and click of the locks. If only she had a remote door opener for her town house she’d be all set. After twelve years one would think she’d be past the paranoia about getting home after most of her Capitol Hill neighbors were asleep, but she was hypervigilant by nature. Anthony still didn’t understand why she dreaded his business trips, given how often she came home late and worked weekends. But at least she came home at the end of the day, even if the end of one day sometimes blurred into the next.

  As she headed down the sidewalk she compared the weight of her briefcase in her left hand with that of the gym bag hanging off her right shoulder. Time to wash her workout clothes. She could put them in the washer as soon as she got inside and then read through the committee report again while they went through the cycle. She’d toss in the blouse she was wearing as well. The back was still damp from leaning against the hot leather seats of her car. Mid-July in Washington, D.C., was a rotten time for the Saab’s AC to punk out.

  She climbed the steps to her front door, pulled the keys out of her purse and let herself into the blessedly cool foyer. Once inside she flipped on the lights and locked the door behind her. Made it. As always she stood still a moment, listening for any sounds that were out of place before venturing through the hallway by the staircase and into her kitchen. First order of business—pour a glass of sauvignon blanc and kick off her shoes.

  The sight of her practical, low-heeled shoes conjured a face she’d been sorely tempted to put her fist through a little while ago—Joy Stuart’s. The evil bitch was close to having all the votes she needed to get the senate to pass a bill that would curtail the freedom of the American people in unprecedented ways. Felicia’s heart started pumping faster at the thought of Joy in her tight business suit and spike heels, using every underhanded trick in the book to rush the bill through both houses of Congress while Drew Franklin’s death was fresh in everyone’s minds. Could so many of her colleagues really be naïve enough to think handing all that power to the Director of Global Intelligence would make the country safer?

  “Morons,” she said aloud as she pulled a stemmed glass off the shelf and poured herself a hefty amount of wine. She took a long sip, then stared at the glass thoughtfully. “Idiots.”

  In the next moment the lights went out.

  “Fabulous,” she muttered. She stood still in the darkness, glass in hand, and waited for them to pop back on. The power grids were overloaded—that had to be it. Except there were lights glowing in her neighbor’s window. She swallowed with difficulty and set her glass down on the counter as gently as she could with her hand shaking.

  She listened.

  The cuckoo clock in the family room ticked out the seconds. One. Two. Three...

  Damn it, Anthony, why aren’t you home?

  The pounding in her temples grew louder, making it hard to hear anything else.

  You’re being a baby, Felicia.

  Okay, she was a grown woman, and she had to deal with the situation. Clearly the problem was within her walls, not throughout the neighborhood. Flashlight. Get a flashlight.

  She took a deep breath, let it out and began to move slowly toward the dining room.

  That’s when she heard it.

  The floorboards in the dining room creaked like they did when someone was coming into the kitchen...

  A whimper rose from her throat and she froze as a shadow moved toward her.

  “So long, Senator,” the shadow said.

  Chapter Eight

  Ben Stuart frowned at his wife as she stood in the walk-in closet in a fuchsia silk robe, trying to figure out what to wear to a barbecue, for Pete’s sake. With old friends.

  “Why don’t you just pull on a pair of shorts?” he said. “There won’t be anyone at Miriam’s to impress.”

  She kept her back to him. “Eighties today? Or hotter?”

  In the past he would have come up behind her, wrapped his arms around her and made some comment about how her presence would drive up the temperature by several degrees. But not now. Not after her scene at Drew Franklin’s memorial service. She’d been obviously drunk when he pulled her past half a dozen congressional colleagues and out the door of Kate’s house. It would’ve been bad enough in front of family alone, but no one ever saw the Honorable Joy Stuart out of control in public. She was the image of sophistication and decorum.

  There’d been a time when Joy lost control in bed with him, and the contrast with her usual comportment was half the excitement for both of them.

  Those days were gone.

  For the past two years he’d seen Joy in two modes—controlled or irritable. Maybe she had shown her wild side only to the now-deceased Drew Franklin. May he rot in hell.

  She emerged from her closet wearing a yellow sundress and low sandals. Her body was lightly tanned. He hadn’t questioned where the rays had come from. According to her those long weekends she’d spent working without coming home she’d been right here in the nation’s capital, cloistered in meeting rooms and offices, only seeing sunlight through the windows.

  If he had noticed her deepening color he had never questioned it. It had long been his way to avoid what he didn’t want to see. Life with Joy, like life with his mother, was easier that way.

  But now she’d rubbed it in his face, and the truth sat on his nose like pigeon shit. />
  “That color looks great with your tan,” he said.

  If she picked up on the irony she didn’t show it. The woman could have made a fortune on the poker circuit. Then again, so could most politicians. “Thanks,” she said without making eye contact. She rarely did these days. “Ready?”

  He grabbed his keys and walked ahead of her out to the driveway, where their new Lexus, a gift from Joy’s parents, sat in all its glory. “I wonder if Kate will show up this year,” he said, glancing at his wife as she slipped into the passenger seat and slammed the door a little too hard. Ah. The satisfaction of knowing he could always get a rise out of her by mentioning Kate. He pulled away from the curb.

  Ben had been going to Jeremy’s birthday parties since the boy was a year old. His and Joy’s friendship with the family had continued through Jeremy’s birth, Gabe and Lindsay’s split and Steve’s death at twenty-three, seven months before Jeremy’s second birthday. Despite her grief, Miriam had insisted on hosting the party at her house, permitting the first ray of light to infuse their mourning. He frowned as memories of that sad time filled his head.

  “She’s selfish enough to come,” Joy said, breaking into his thoughts.

  Christ, Joy was so predictable when it came to Kate. “Selfish?” he asked. “How do you figure that? She comes because Jeremy wants her there.”

  “She comes to lord it over everyone else that she’s Jeremy’s favorite aunt—not that I care. But she’s not even his aunt anymore. That went out the door when she remarried.”

  Ben’s smile was bitter. “Hard to say it, isn’t it? When she married Drew.” He shook his head and took the corner faster than was necessary. “You should have pushed Kate at me that summer. Then you could’ve divorced me and married Drew yourself. But that wouldn’t have been as exciting, would it?”

  From the corner of his eye he saw that Joy was staring at him, but he didn’t look at her. It had to be killing her not to reply. Some perverse instinct kept him going. “Anyway, Kate’s his godmother, and I for one always look forward to seeing her at these things.” And thank Christ she was alive to be there. He swallowed hard. Things could have gone so tragically wrong...

  “I’ll just bet you do,” Joy muttered, staring straight ahead.

  “It’ll be tough for her this year, though. Seeing you,” Ben said. “Knowing—oh, excuse me, I mean suspecting—that you were fucking her husband.” They came to a stop sign and he slammed on the brakes. Joy was jolted forward, then hit the back of the seat hard. “But now that I think about it,” he went on, ignoring the look of controlled fury on her face, “that would certainly pump up your voracious ego. And here I was wondering why you suddenly wanted to join me this year.”

  “If you’re trying to kill me,” she said in a tone that sent a chill up Ben’s back, “maybe you should pull a Kate and pay somebody to—” She stopped short, her words hanging in the air.

  When Ben turned to her she appeared to be looking out the side window. He slowed and drove the rest of the way in silence.

  * * *

  “Oh, no,” Lindsay said when a cab pulled up in front of her former mother-in-law’s house. “Tell me this is not who I think it is.”

  “Who?” Richard asked.

  “Kate, that’s who. Shit.”

  Gabe listened in silence from across his mother’s spacious dining room, which was decorated with streamers and balloons for Jeremy’s tenth birthday. He took a pull on his beer—the only one he was going to allow himself today. Every year he had one beer on his son’s birthday, to take the edge off seeing Kate. Damn it. He wasn’t ready to see her again, not after that...craziness at her house, the craziness he couldn’t think about right now because thinking about it made his cock so fucking hard. He stayed where he was, holding up the wall farthest from the foyer, mouth shut, trying to think about anything or anyone but her.

  He’d put off telling his lieutenant that he was the wrong person for the job, that he’d severed any real connection to Kate eight years ago. In answer to the lieu’s questions he offered half-truths. Yes, he’d gone to her house after the memorial service, and again the following afternoon, and he would see her at Jeremy’s birthday party. He didn’t mention that he’d lost control the first two times and didn’t expect to speak to her today.

  Fuck me.

  Miriam dried her hands on a dishtowel as she crossed the dining room, eyes trained on the front windows. “Any reporters on her tail?” his mother asked in her straightforward, unemotional way. When Steve died, a vital piece of his mother died with him. The woman who used to laugh and argue with the same abandon with which she loved had turned into herself after her younger son’s passing, and began to parse out her emotions as though giving too much would drain a finite well on the edge of drying up completely.

  Lindsay’s new husband, Richard, said, “Looks like she aged ten years since her husband died.”

  Yeah, sure she does. Gabe knew what Richard was doing—reassuring Lindsay that he wasn’t attracted to her former sister-in-law. Even though Lindsay was an attractive blonde, she’d always been jealous of Kate. Still was, even though she pretended to be Kate’s friend. No doubt that was about the big house in McLean that Kate’s money had bought her when she hooked up with Richard. For Jeremy, Lindsay had told him.

  Right.

  Carolyn, Gabe’s oldest sister, chimed in. “I’m surprised she was willing to come, with all the crap she’s dealing with these days.”

  Gabe looked over at Carolyn, her curly light brown hair so like Steve’s had been. Of the siblings, she had always been the least openly critical of Kate, which had annoyed the shit out of him plenty of times. But not today. Today he felt relieved by her subtle defense of Kate. Surprise, surprise.

  “She doesn’t like to disappoint Jeremy,” Miriam said, and laid the damp towel carefully over the back of one of the dining room chairs. When the doorbell rang she brushed her hands against hips that had grown wide over the years and went to the front door. She opened it and greeted Kate, no doubt with a lukewarm hug.

  “Hello, Miriam. It’s so good to see you.”

  At the sound of Kate’s voice, Gabe took another long pull on his beer. When he tipped his head back he saw the accusatory gleam in Lindsay’s eyes. Just like every other year. And just like every year, Jeremy raced to the door and threw himself at Kate, and Gabe’s chest got tight. Except this year his chest tightened in a way he found disturbing.

  “Jeremy, let the woman breathe,” Miriam said.

  Gabe glanced over at the scene in the foyer, where a beaming Kate had her arms wrapped tight around his son, then quickly looked away. Why Jeremy was so attached to her he didn’t know, but nothing seemed to shake it. Would the kid be more disappointed if he didn’t show up or if Kate didn’t show up?

  “I’m so strong now I can pick you up,” Jeremy proclaimed.

  “I don’t believe it,” Kate teased.

  “Okay, watch!”

  Gabe couldn’t resist a peek at Jeremy with his arms wrapped around Kate’s slim waist, lifting her up on to her toes.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Kate gushed. “You are strong. Have you been lifting weights?”

  “See what I mean?”

  Jeremy put her down but didn’t let go. “I saw you on the news,” he said. “But my mom turned off the TV.”

  Lindsay rushed to the foyer before Jeremy could tell any more secrets. She embraced Kate warmly. “You shouldn’t have bothered to come,” she said in her best maternal tone. Gabe recognized it as a crock of shit, of course. “Not after all that’s happened. Jeremy would have understood, wouldn’t you, honey?”

  “I’m just here to drop off a present,” Kate said. “I’m not going to stay.”

  Jeremy hugged her tighter. “You have to stay!”

  “Jeremy,” Lindsay said, “this isn’t a good time for Aunt Kate.”

  But Jeremy was determined. He gazed up into Kate’s eyes with that pleading expression Gabe knew so well. “Please stay, A
unt Kate,” he said. “Pretty pretty please with a cherry on top?”

  “Don’t harass her.” Lindsay tried unsuccessfully to pull Jeremy’s arm from around Kate’s waist. His attachment to Kate pissed her off royally, and Gabe had to admit he admired the kid’s tenacity.

  Kate ran her hand over the top of Jeremy’s head, a small smile on her lips. “I’ll stay for a while,” she said quietly.

  “Cool!” Jeremy shouted. He glanced at Gabe, but instead of leading Kate in the opposite direction like he usually did, he took her hand. “Want to say hi to my dad?”

  Kate turned to face Gabe, her expression wary. For good reason. She let Jeremy pull her into the dining room but stopped several feet from where Gabe’s feet were planted and held on to a chair. He kept his expression neutral, but damn if she didn’t search his face for something more.

  “Hello, Gabe,” she said.

  Gabe felt several pairs of eyes on him. He lifted two fingers off his beer in a pseudo-wave, gave a tight nod and mumbled, “Hello.” Like they were strangers. Like he hadn’t had his tongue in her mouth and his hands on her breasts five days ago. Right before he more or less accused her of killing her husband.

  Miriam called to Jeremy from the kitchen and he scampered off. Kate spotted Richard and his sister, Bonnie, and said hello. Neither of them had bothered to greet her, and now they threw back perfunctory hellos. Kind of like his, Gabe thought. Had they always been this rude, or was he just noticing it for the first time?

  “Oh.” Joy stood in the kitchen doorway directing a cool look at Kate.

  Gabe felt a twinge of sympathy. In her state she was no match for Joy. How must it feel to be confronted by your dead husband’s mistress?

  “Did Ben get the grill going?” Miriam asked Joy from the kitchen.

  “He’s already got some hot dogs on it.” Joy turned her sharp blue eyes on Gabe. “I’m surprised you aren’t hiding out in the yard yourself, Gabe.” She didn’t have to glance at Kate for her meaning to be clear to everyone. Kate sucked in a breath.